
Pass ^4f7 
Book 






THE GRE-A.T 



FUNERAL ORATION 



'^i4UL 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



MISS EMMA HARDINGE. 



DELIVERED SUNDAY. APRIL 10, 1865, AT COOPER INSTITUTE, 

NEW YORK, BEFORE UPWARDS OF THREE 

THOUSAND PERSONS. 



NEW YORK: 

AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY, 

Nassau Street. 



T^WENTY-iniVE CENTS. 



Press op Wvnkoop & HiLlExBEOK, No. 113 FntTOH Street, N. T. 



THE GRE^T 



FUNERAL ORATION 



OS 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



mSS EMxMA HARDINGE. 



DELIVERED SUNDAY, APRIL 10, I8G0, AT COOPER INSTITUTE, 

NEW YORK, BEFORE UPWARDS OF THREE 

THOUSAND PERSONS. 



NEW YORK: 

AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY, 

Nassau Street. 



TWEXTY-FIVE CENTS. 



E^61 




IPI^EIPJ^GE. 



The news of the death of Abraham Liiicohi, President of 
the United States, was telegraphed to Kew York on Saturday 
morning, April 15. Toward the close of the day. Miss 
Emma Hardinge received an invitation from several influen- 
tial citizens to deliver an oration upon the lamented Chief 
Magistrate of the nation. The invitation was accepted, and 
the time agreed upon for its delivery was the next day, Sun- 
day, at three o'clock, P. M., at Cooper Institute. There was 
no time for preparing an address of so important a character, 
and the effort was entirely extemporaneous. The attention 
with which the speaker was listened to, the deep interest 
aroused, and the irrepressible applause with which an assem- 
bly of upward of ?/<rcei'//o?^s,'z;ic^ persons in rerrupted her dis- 
course, sufficiently testified not less to the earnestness and 
justice of the tribute paid to the illustrious martyr than io 
the eloquence that characterized this most valuable oration. 

The oration having fortunately been phonographically 
reported, is now published in response to a very generally 
expressed desire on the part of citizens of all shades of polit- 
ical belief, who are solicitous that so fitting a memento of 
the virtues of Abraham Lincoln should be read by every 
American patriot. 



INVOCATION. 

Thou that hearest prayer ! Look upon iis, Thy 
children, in this hour of deepest soul-affliction! Lord of 
the sunshine and the storm, God of the starry night and 
sunlit day. Thou who art our joy, our grief, our all ! teach 
us to remember, in the darkness as the light, that 'tis our 
Father's hand that's dealing \yith ns; our Father's footsteps 
leading us, through mystery and gloom, to pierce the ever- 
brightening path of His omniscient goodness. Eighteen 
hundred years ago Thy best beloved meekly stood to hear 
the roaring multitude reject him for Barabbas. Eighteen 
hundred years ago and the rocking earth sustained a dying 
Angel on the cross of shame, while a murderer went forth 
free. Once more we see Thy sou beloved, Thy child of 
light, and faithful servant, struck down beneath the hand of 
guilt and crime, a sacrifice to the lost and darkened souls 
that choose a Barabbas and reject a Jesus ! Thou whose 
still small voice we wait to hear when the whirlwind of our 
grief sweeps by, and the tempest of our anguish is sobbed 
out ! Teach us, as we mourn the day of Crucifixion, to 
turn with brightening memory to the hopes of Easter. 
Teach us to recollect that, if the best and purest that ever 
walked the earth must needs be lifted up on the cross of 
death, all earth might rejoice in a resurrecting Easter, so 
has the martyr whom we mourn this hour gone from our 
mortal eyes, a sign to all mankind of this day of Resurrec- 
tion — a bright and strong assurance for us, who so dearly 
loved him, that as the Master so the servant rises, and, like 
the blessed Nazarene, His follower in life, His prototype in 
death, he has joined the sons of light, the hosts of victory 
crowned, and wears the palm of a glorious immortality, 
arisen, arisen ! to his Father's home, and ours. 



ORATIOX. 

It seems to me as if I heard a tone, borne on the winss of 
time and soanding through the corridors of space, sweepioff 
the earth Hke a breeze, from the shores of the remotest East 
to this land of the distant West — a voice that for eighteen 
hundred rears has pleaded before the throne of Almightv 
Jostice in the only strain that can solve the dire and dreadful 
problem of red marder saying, " Father, fordve them, 
they know net what thty Jo.'^ Friends, this voice most surely 
speaks, both to you and nie, in this hour of awful grief. 
There seems no other utterance fit to explain its meanins:, 
or able to pronounce sentence on the terrible cause of pain 
that afflicts us in this most unparalleled and sublime national 
woe. I recall the page of history in vain to find any prece- 
dent (save the one which laid the foundations of your re- 
ligion) for this foul and monstrous act of guilt which forms 
the record of this solemn hour. 

When I remember the circumstances, time, and person- 
ages of this tragic history, all attempts at parallel grow 
pale and fail us utterly. Rome's Caesar pleads to us with the 
dumb but most eloquent voices of " his bleeding wounds ;" 
but before that piteous sacrifice stand the avenging forms of 
patriots. France points to a Louis Capet, and the execrat- 
ing hiss of abashed posterity pronounces his doom was 
martyrdom ; but even then his guiltless life was yielded up 
to rime and preparation, a show of justice, and the sancrion 
of a multitude. The wrongs of an oppressed people and the 
ruin of a nation were on the heads of both the Roman and 
French rulers. 

The shadow, if not the- substance, of justice condemned 



them, and the contagious barbarism of the times exceeds in 
each case the atrocity of the murderous act. But where is 
the plea which we can hand down to a candid posterity m 
exculpation, wholly or partially, of the parricidal act which 
has robbed the American nation of a father, every Amencan 
cHizen of a friend, factious pai-ties of their most generous 
judge, a relentless enemy of their best protector, and the 
whole world of an honest man ? Where is the precedent m 
history for the insanity which destroys in a nation's pre- 
server a nation's institutions ; in a nation's noblest man her 
brightest jewel; and in the hour of his noblest recorded acts 
inflicts on him the blow that recoils in an immortal stain upon 

a nation's honor ? . , . j 

Pass over the perilous scenes of strife, political hatred, 
and factional discord, that might have drawn lines of sepa- 
-ation between himself and those who could not appreciate 
his acts of policy, and follow him to the time when he stands 
the central firrure of the dark and distracting scenes of war. 
Behold him therein the mid<t of contending armies, confront- 
in- the friends who were so often unfaithful and cold, and 
the enemy that was always pitiless and cruel ; see him ex- 
tending the blessed flag of peace and reconciliation over all 
alike; stretchin- his paiernal arm over every American, and, 
like the almi-htvand merciful father of the parable, receiv- 
ing the prodigal back to his heart with a magnanimity^ and 
beneficence that challenges the deepest gi-atitude of the 
wrong-doer, the fealty of friends, and the admiration of the 
whole worid. Strong, brave, and immovable in the hour ot 
trial and calamitv, Abraham Lincoln practiced the last 
crowning virtue of a great man's life, the divine attribute of 
mercy; and after having gallantly conquered, generously 
forgav^e the foe, uniting again in one fraternal clasp the se^^- 
ered hands of North and South, and silenced every jealous 



lip or rebellious tongue by a clemency calculated to win 
more hearts by liis kindness than the invincible armies of the 
North have subdued by their arms. In all his public acts, 
even to the very last, we see him ever casting himself trust- 
ingly and nobly on the fealty of the people. Surely he must 
have loved them, for who ever before so trusted them ? 

Despite of the fearful storm which treason had conjured 
up around him, in defiance of the insolent presence of the 
rebellion and the infamous serpent-trail of conspiracy, the 
geneious, unselfish heart of the man still confided in the 
people, and he went among them with none of the panoply 
of state, none of the assumptions of power or place, common 
to others of his position; he went without guard or protec- 
tion but in the peojjle's fealty and love ; and it was even for 
their sakes, to please the people, nor suffer a shade of dis- 
appointment to embitter, by his absence, their hours of 
recreation, that the noble heart went forth to its death, the 
tender f\ither to cast himself into the arms of the parricide 
that struck him down. Oh ! what an hour, and under what 
a sacred trust, to consummate this deep and burning stain 
upon humanity ! Accursed be the liand, the time, the place, 
that wrote upon the page of history the foulest blot that 
page has ever borne. 

'Tis well the dying Master on the cross plead, in his pity- 
ing love, for the children of perdition. Our lips are too 
iinchristlike, face to faci^ with such an act as this, to say 
amen for the prayer of mercy on this wretch. 

In view of the special infamy which time, circumstance, 
and person all so fearfully aggravate, permit me here to 
speak my deep conviction that this act, however fatally we 
know it is the work of plot and rebellion, still cannot be, for 
the honor of humanity, the organized act of any great section 
of the land we call American. I cannot believe it the work 



of South, North, West, the common enemy, or even a foreign 
foe. The act of a demon scarcely suffices to brand a whole 
humanity ; and we should pause long ere we accept, as con- 
clusive, evidence to show that a knot of inliuman serpents 
wealing tlie shape of men, or a coil of conspirators doing 
the deeds of demons, should represent the country of our 
birth and manhood. Of this I shall speak, more hereafter, 
but having entered my protest against the belief tliat an 
enemy w^e once called brother, still Americans, an ! always 
mrn^ could have wrought the deed which none but earth's 
Cains are capable of doing. I propose to extract whatever 
remains of use or instruction in this hour of gloom by trac- 
ing, as we may, the deep, mysterious purposes of God dis- 
closed in this solemn lesson. Fiist, then, we are called upon 
to review the noble teaching in our lost friend's history ; 
next, to scrutinize the deed which closed it ; and then deter- 
mine what the trumpet-voice of this dread hour demands of 
us as dutij. 

I cannot think it is out of place to-day to retrace " those 
shining foot-prints on the sands of time" which he we mourn 
has lett behind him, although they are, as they justly should 
be, already household words among the people of his love. 

Now, will you deem it less in order that I should pre- 
sume to be your memento of this sacred page? Month after 
month it has seemed my special ins[>iration to call upon the 
people, whom it was my privilege to ad Iress, to study out 
and comprehend the acts of him whom I iAt and named as 
the true " Preserver of his Country." 

Scarcely ten days have passed since these walls re-echoed 
to the gallant cheer that hailed ray voice when I told you 
of the sterling worth, the loyal faith, and providential wisdom 
of this noble incarnation of earth's best republicanism — the 
man of the people, the People's Abraham Lincoln. Some 



10 

of you heard me then, but none of you know that the high- 
est hope that my ambition cherished was that some future day 
should see me clasp his honest hand in mine, as the noblest 
meed I ever could receive for unpaid and zealous service. 
My hope is quenched, and the kind paternal hand is marble 
now ; nor you nor I shall clasp it, until that day when we 
stand with him " where the sun goes down no more ; where 
the mourners cease to weep; and the just rejoice forever." 

What a retrospect of a splendid career developed, if not 
wholly fashioned, by the fostering sun of American repub- 
licanism, does our great chief magistrate's history present us 
■with ! Fifty-six years ago, and the lowsigh of the breeze stir- 
ring the trees of old Kentucky,the song of the lonely woodbird^ 
and the chirp of the tenants of the wildest solitudes were the 
natal songs that welcomed into life the child whose name has to 
reverberate through the earth in the clariontonesof a world- 
wide fame ; born to the inheritance of stern poverty and rude 
toil, a log-cabin was his only shelter, the cathedral arches of 
the green forest his baptismal roof, and the lonely stars and 
voiceless flowers, the backwoodsman father and humble 
mother, his only friends and teachers ; and yet we trace the 
germs of Nature's truest nobility unfolding themselves in 
every year of his faithful life; always the gcod and dutiful 
child, the industrious little aid of the toiling father, the will- 
ing little drudge of the patient mother. 

At seven years he goes forth with the spelling-book, one 
of the three volumes that constitute the family library. At 
eight he learns the first dread lesson of slavery, namely, that 
free white labor has no chance in competition with captive 
black ; that the condition of a poor white laborer in a slave 
State is more hopeless than the slave himself ; and hence him- 
self and little household endure the toil and hardship of a 
weary pioneer journey from Kentucky slavery and darkness, 



11 

to Indiana freedom and light. Remember, thus early did 
Abraham Lincoln learn his first practical lessons of the cor- 
rupting and festering influences of slavery. At ten years 
old the little backwoodsman's boy, by industr}^ and (for 
time and condition) most arduous study, had become the 
wonder of the scattered population in which he dwelt for 
his skill in reading, and his yet more astonishing faculty for 
writing, only equaled by the kindness which urged him to 
become the scribe of all who sought the good boy's service 
in this humble way. At nineteen he is the Mississippi boat- 
man, intrusted with wealth and others' welfare, honored and 
sought for himself and his honest manhood. 

At twenty -one he first set foot in that Illinois whose 
proudest boast to-day is to call him hers. Here he makes 
his father's home, helps build his house, and fence his farm, 
and immortalized that humble form of labor wiiich renders 
the title of the " raU-splitter^^ a patent of America's nobility. 
From this we trace him from his final exodus from the pater, 
rial roof, now the hired farm hand, the clerk in the 
petty store, the agent, buyer, scribe, postmaster, captain 
in the Black Hawk war, surveyor, lawyer, legislator, but 
ever the same, good, self-made, self-taught, toiling, honest, 
truthful, studious man. O earthly potentates ! proud Euro- 
pean princes! fortune's favored children! how would you 
smile to be bid to school in the forest log-hut ; to study the 
ragged page of one single volume ; to learn of the teachers 
grinding poverty and toil, and prepare for a rule more large, 
more onerous and high in import, than Asia or Europe's 
greatest monarchs know in the farmer's barn, the boat- 
man's raft, the village store, or the poor clerk's office ! 
Bright, beautiful, and just republicanism, thou knowest 
thy kings, and never can mistake thy princes ! And in every 
step of this great magic ladder cut by his hands, erected by 



1-2 

his indiistiy, and trod by the unwearying feet of good 
Abraham Lincohi. thou didst determine that the lowest 
round of that ladder, the people's ladder, the ladder of 
Nature's royalty and God's nobility, wis filly placed in the 
old Kentucky woods, the last and highest in the New World's 
presidential mansion. 

Don't you remember, you who are familiar with this won- 
derful page of human liistory, how nobly and skillfully the 
kind young lawyer used one of his first exercises in his sub- 
tle profession for the saving of tliat precious boon of life 
\\'hich has been so savagely wrung from him. 
Oh, how the heart aches at the fearful contrast ! 
Young Armstrong, the son of a poor widow, who had once 
been kind to the boy Lincoln, stood arraigned on the charge 
of murder, in danger of his life. 

The young lawyer Lincoln, never forgetful of the least of 
kindnesses, came forward in the hour of the widow's desola- 
tion and her son's dire need, and, without the least expecta- 
tion of other reward than the applause of his noble heart, 
tendered his service to the wretched pair. They say, on the 
day of the trial he promised the widow he would give her 
back her son to life and freedom "before the sun went 
down." By the keen pe:ception of his lucid mind to per- 
ceive his client's innocence, aided by genius, skill, and elo- 
quence to prove it, he kept his word, and, with the last 
lingering rays of the setting sun gilding his noble brow, he 
bestowed on the widow her son, " her only son," restored 
by him to life and light and liberty. Such was the youth's 
career; the statesman's is public history — the history of that 
mighty struggle in which the noble heart of the man and 
the clear head of the politician became both alike so remark- 
ably distinguished. 

The most prominent and renowned evidence of this is 



13 

found in his famous senatorial contest vvitli Judge Douglas. 
No one can fait to perceive, from the entire tenor of Mr. 
Lincoln's remarkable life, that he fully understood and com- 
pletely loathed the monstrous blot that had crept into the 
national legislation in the form of legalized slavery. 

He was its o^jen and avowed enemy, ever voting in his 
place, whenever occasion served, against its extension in any 
form ; the contest I have alludeLl to, enabled liim to bring all 
the powers of his acute and logical mind and forcible nervous 
oratory, to bear on the monstrous evil of its extension into 
the Territories, or the perpiituation of the gigantic wrong in 
any form outside of its then existing State limits. And yet, 
despite the unequivocal opposition which he maintained so 
constantly to the character, political influence, and destructive 
nature of this suicidal institution, we find Mr. Lincoln just 
as firm in his defense of that State-right sovereignty which 
granted the constitutional privilege of retaining slavery in 
each State's precinct unrestrained by the interference of the 
central government. I do not propose in this place to dis- 
cuss the vexed problem of the just equilibrium to be attained 
between the powers of the States as petty sovereignties and 
the central government as a whole. I notice the subject 
here to point to the fact, that while the known beneficence 
and wisdom of Mr. Lincoln's character inclined us to expect 
of him an uncompromising war on slavery, by wiiat I believe 
to be the providential character of his mind, anticipating the 
irrepressible conflict in which the nation's life was yet to be 
involved, he was ever led to refuse his sanction to a single 
act, by which (as we now perceive) in after years the rebel- 
lious South couldjiave founded a plea upon, to excuse their 
base secession. 

That rash and hasty zeal that would have hurried the 
nation's Chief Magistrate into acts which ignored the letter 







— ^i" lM*Ui. 



* 7Twy 




-!.-.i_r:"~ 1 



1-5 



vast and oiomentoas issues, where are the acts or words, 
the noble State papers, brilliant messages, or clear and 
UDwaveriog deeds of Abraham Lincoln ever fonnd at fault ? 
I answer, boldly challenging earth's statesmen to disprove 
my words — not in one single instamce! 

' There's not a statesman of ths age bat might read a les- 
son in the firm and lofty dignity of tone in which the na- 
tion's status was defined, aye, and maintained, too, in all his 
foreign messaffes and ministerial instructions. When dark, 
impending ruhi shook the earth beneath his feer, where will 
you find the evidence of we ikness in one angle word to any 
foreisn power ? Where one joi of yielding of the nation's 
undivi le<l dignity ? Where one base concession to the des- 
pot's aim to force him to subniission through the country's 
real internal weakness t He took with the tiath of office 
the nation's weal or woe upon his shoulders ; wore it as a 
mantle ; girdled it about his towering form with his heart- 
strinss ; a^nd wraps it now around the lifeless ruin of bis still 
and pulseless heart as a windir g-sheet of glory. To him you 
owe it that the name and dignity of the still united States 
towered like a monitor above the wreck and ruin, so high 
and grand and threatening, that no hand but an armed Am- 
erican's dare rise in presumptuous threat against the Srars 
and Stripes. One of the noblest State papers that the re- 
cords of any narion can show is, to my thinking, to be found 
in Mr. Lincoln's first inaugural address to this nation. Tnere 
the entire question of the Protean Problem— Slavery— in cod- 
necriou with its legalized existence in the States as guaran- 
teed bv the Consritution, is fairiy and fully laid out, the 
suicidal character of secession unvailed, and the magnificent 
projumions of a united American republicanism grandly 
depicted. A mind capable of analyzing with such irresistible 
a-id clear deductions the entangled meshes of treason in which 



16 

the nation's life was involved, never could fail in steering the 
ship of State through all the shoals and reefs in which she 
was subsequently to struggle for the port ot safety. The 
prescient wisdom of the many great statesmen who had pre- 
ce.led him seemed to culminate in his simple yet lucid defi- 
nition of the nation's situation, in a speech made by him, as 
early as 1S5S, on the occasion of his nomination as candi- 
date for senator in Illinois, when he says : " A house divided 
against itself cannot stand ; I believe this government 
cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do 
not expect the Union to be dissolved ; I do not ex- 
pect the house to fall ; but I do expect it will ceaie to be 
divided. It will become all one thing or all the other." 
These and many other such utterances of his public life 
conclusively prove not only his perfect understanding of the 
vexed questions that were agitating the land, but also give 
the key to that policy which his opponents have so olten 
and so rashly denounced as "time-serving," but which now 
looms up as the {)rovidential wisdom which not only foresees, 
but knows Uow to await the ripening of the proper time for 
action. And when that time came, was Mr. Lincoln slow, 
fearful, or disobedient to '' the higher law" that ever ruled 
his life in availing himself of it? I allude to the enuncia- 
tion of the immortal proclamation of emancipation, the deed 
which, beyond all others of his life, crowns him with eternal 
honor, and will hand his name down to an immortal glory 
through all posterity. Up to the end of the first, three 
years ot the war Mr. Lincoln had robbed the rebellious foe 
of every shadow of plea against his administration by a 
guard over the very rights they had forfeited, as jealous as 
themselves could have exercised, retaining by his wise policy 
the strength of the vacillating western and border States 
still attached to the Union. 



17 

Assailed by unwise friends and bitter foes, with taunts and 
revilings on every hand, still he moved not ; but when the 
crisis came in which the nation's life was balanced against 
protective southern policy, how long did the noble statesman 
hesitate ? The cry of the discontented and disloyal raised 
its accustomed wail against freedom and howled out 
" abolitionism ;" but above the murmur of the storm arose 
in his ear the grand Mosaic cry of " Let my people go ! " 
and although that voice has been thundering down the 
ages, and a burning bush and a fire-crowned Sinai has 
flashed before the eyes of despots in every century of time, 
whenever God's oppressed and captive people cried to Him 
for deliverance, three thousand years has seen that awful 
charge held disregarded, mocked, and spit upon, until good 
Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, proclaimed it in " Liberty 
throughout the land, to every inhabitant thereof!" God 
bless him for it ! 

I was present in San Francisco one year after this memor- 
able deed, and, in company with the only other white orator 
who could be found to take part on such an occasion, 
helped the enfranchised race to honor the glorious anniver- 
sary. 

The memory of the sable martyrs that had perished at 

Port H udson and Fort Pillow was still green in memory ; 

they told of the black regiments, formed of men whose 

ancestors' unpaid toil had made the country rich, whose 

backs were still seamed with lashes, and whose limbs still 

gashed with the mark of fetters, but whose freed lives were 

now devoted to the salvation of the land that had enslav-3d 

them. These pictures were vividly portrayed in strains of 

their own peculiar, wild, and touching eloquence ; but all was 

forgotten, all forgiven when the name of their modern 

^[oses was pronounced, and then it was that a shout went 
2 



up to God, chorused by four millions of glad, rejoicing 
voices, echoed by the white slaves of despotism and tyranny 
all over the world — a shout of " God bless Abraham Lin- 
coln !" That cry will be a passport to his soul through the 
courts of heaven, in all eternity, did it stand alone as the 
only record of his pure and spotless life. 

But wherever I turn my eyes in his unprecedented career 
I find some fresh challenge to my wonder and admiration. 
No man in history was ever before intrusted with the charge 
of such vast armies, the disbursemer)ts of such enormous sums 
of money, or the exercise of such stupendous powers. Mr. 
Lincoln modestly professed himself unequal to the task of 
directing the military situations of his vast armies, yet his 
correspondence with General McClellan proves that either 
his clear intuitions or his real ability always dictated the 
wisest and most able -instructions to his generals, the only 
real failure of which was the disregard with which they were 
received. No scrutiny however searching, has yet disclosed 
one jot of selfishness, dishonesty, or aught but generous sin- 
gleness of purpose in the use of all the power, finance, and 
vast resources intrusted to his charge Oh people of 
the land he blessed and saved ! can 1 deal justly with his 
sacred name, unless I present it to your undivided admira- 
tion as your " Father Abraham Lincoln !" — a man whose 
page of history stands without a blemish, w4iose bright 
escutcheon will shine through all futurity without one single 
spot. My retrospect of this noble life is almost ended. It 
but remains in this place to remind you that if our Chief 
Magistrate was, in his own unassuming phrase, "too deficient 
in military experience to general the situation," he was 
amply supplied with that moral fitness for command which 
has made the world's most potent conquests and ' furnished 
in history its brightest wreaths of victory. From the very 



19 

honr when he gave to tlie armies of the North, a moral 
watchword and the glorious war-cry " Liberty" the most 
genuine and unequivocal success has marked their every 
action. From point to point, their march has been a triumph. 
They swept the border States ; opened twelve hundred miles 
of highway on the grand old Father of Waters ; pierced 
every gate of life in the quivering body of the confederate 
South ; drew their girdle of irresistible conquest around the 
vast chain of territorial lands, East, West, and South, back 
to the North again, and paused not until they had torn the 
heart of rebeldom throbbing from the midst of the Old Domin- 
ion, and placed Richmond, a votive offering on the shrine of 
that glorious Union that bent beneath the storm only to rise 
in more glorious majesty again on the shattered walls of 
Sumter — and the crowning acts of all were the last of this 
strange eventful history. 

True to the genius of the opposing sections, behold the 
pampered aristocrats of the South, made rich on stolen labor 
sending their " Conimissioners^^ to treat with the nation they 
had so recklessly sought to destroy ; on the other hand, see 
the man who held the highest dignity the earth could confer 
on man going, in simple presence, almost unattended — with 
none of the guards his sacred life required, none of the out- 
ward shows of form his stupendous charge might sanction, 
going himself, in person, father-like, to receive and welcome 
back his prodigal child. 

What a contrast does the simple, unassuming presence of 
the man, conferring with the rebel emissaries, present to tiie 
lofty and unflinching tone of the President when he spoke 
for the nation ! He was nothing for himself, all for the peo- 
ple ; he went forth, the unassuming backwoodsman's boy 
to meet his southern brothers ; he stood, the chief of the great 
New World, to speak of the terms on which its' peace 



20 

could be insured ; nor, vvlien treating for its people, abated 
one jot of the unconditional submission of every soul beneath 
the shelter of the American Constitution, the just but lit- 
eral letter of its laws. 

We have traced him as the incarnate spirit of true 
republicanism, the self-made boy, the unimpeachable 
youth, the noble man, the legishitor, statesman, or?tor, 
chief magistrate, and father of a mighty people, their staff 
in the earthquake's shock, their anchor in the storm. 
What more remains than to contemplate tiim obeying the 
behests of his Almighty Father, killing the fatted calf to 
welcome back the returning prodigal, following the foot- 
steps of his Christian Master, returning good for evil, dis-- 
pensiiig blessings for curses, and conquering foes more surely 
with his generous acts of mercy than all the armies of the 
earth could do with sword and cannon. Did he forget the 
miserable wrecks of manhood incarcerated in Libby prison 
and Castle Thunder ? Did he cease to mourn the heroes 
slain, the homes made desolate, the hearts bereaved, the 
thousands fiercely massacred ? Had he forgotten the emaci- 
ated shadows of what once were men returned from the 
fiendish grasp of demon captors? Or had his ear grown dull 
to the dying shrieks from Fort Pillow and many a battle- 
field? He forgot nothing, this brave, great heart! but he 
forgave far more than he forgot. And however we may know 
in the awful lesson of his shameful murder that his magna- 
nimity upreared his own funeral pyre, I do believe, when this 
dark record of the great American conflict and its termina- 
tion shall pierce the astounded ears of foreign nations, all 
other acts will be forgotten, all other blood-stained memo- 
ries wiped away, and all other stormy passages of this tem- 
pestuous time be obliterated in the triumph of that Christ- 
like spirit which opened its arms of welcome to the fallen 



21 

and penitent General Robert E. Lee. Would that the story 
ended here ! Would that the hero-life filled np the glitter- 
ing page ere the martyr's doom blots out the light in blood ! 
Oh, that our eyes might have followed those brightening 
footprints through the earth made holier by his presence, 
rather than, turning as they do this day through falling 
tears, to seek him midst the martyred hosts of light in the 
far, far distant skies ! But I fence with the dreadful truth 
that shuts out IJie glorious life and quenches the lamp 
which so brightly shone for us, leaving our land and our 
hearts, our homes and hearths, so very, very dark I I pause 
on the threshold of that fearful gate through which our 
strength and our hope went out, scarcely daring to cast our 
mourning eyes to the dreadful beyond which has left our 
country desolate ! But I must redeem the promise of the 
hour, and speak to the very deed, the fearful act of murder, 
whose harsh, dissonant voice rings in the requiem notes of 
the very bells that to-day should have sounded out the glad- 
rejoicing tones of peace. I have but a few words to say 
concerning this deerl, but a passing glance to cast upon its 
already doomed and inhuman authors ! 

He who knows the secrets of all hearts can best decide 
how many of His creatures sink so low beneath the human 
image of Himself as to be concerned in the act that struck 
down the noblest in his very noblest hour, and added to the 
impious crime of parricidal murder the wanton, miserable 
waste of golden opportunities, the only ones that could save 
the fallen South or rejoice the conquering North. I still 
hope, for the honor of humanity, for the name of free Amer- 
ica, for the sake of judgment, reason, sanity, and manhood, 
that this deed does not represent more than a petty band of 
Cains. But while the hiss of a whole earth's execration hoots 
the wretch from life who was the foremost hand to strike the 



22 

blow ; while we acquit a large humanity or any section of 
God's earth we call a country, from complicity in the mon- 
ster deed, should we forget the upas-tree which bears such 
dismal fruits as this assassin ? Shall we forget the accursed 
cause, the hateful, poisonous cause, that makes a country 
pamper tc its slaves, feeds up and pampers on the shameful 
gains of others' labor a whole community in idleness, 
builds up a rank, degraded aristocracy, living by theft of 
men, ruling, by force of blows and stripes and bullying 
tones, weakness and ignorance, and bearing inevitably 
(from a brutal source) the rank and hideous weeds secession, 
savage war, and treacherous murder. 

There are men now who sit beneath the southern orange 
and magnolia and weep for him as we weep ; hearts in the 
unhappy South as sorrowful as ours ; heads bowed with 
shame, and many a one who would — as I or many of you 
would — cheerfully lay down his life to recall the precious 
one the country mourns. 

Thousands of southern Rachels weep this day for our 
dead chief; and wide, clear-sighted men in the furthest South 
know their best friend and the country's true preserver will 
lie low in the grave of Lincoln. 

But what is that to the past ? Who can recall it ? God's 
footsteps never return upon themselves. The southern insti- 
tution, enemy alike of God and man, has slain the South, 
and as the monstrous blossom of a poison-tree, has slain its 
friend and honor in Abraham Lincoln. For never man would 
have dared to raise his wicked hand to slay a good man in 
the very hour when his goodness shone'most brightly ; never 
coward stolen to the helpless bed of an almost dying^creature 
to cut and hack the unresisting form of sickness — but those 
who had learned to love the traffic in human life ; but those 
whom the groans of lacerated black men had made callous, 



23 

and who, having seen the murderous knife of treason whetted 
for the nation's life, scrupled not to sharpen it for fathers 
and for brothers. I do not tax this deed upon the South, 
hut on its spirit ; if not upon the men of the South, yet on its 
institutions ; and if not the act in very person of slave-own- 
ers, the blood of Lincoln lies at the door of Slavery! 

Oh, friends ! the prayer of the gentle Master, " Father, 
forgive them, they know not what they do" constitutes the his- 
tory of this dreadful wrong, but nevertheless it must not close 
our ears to the mighty right. We know that the cause that 
makes men forget their humanity ; the mean and truckling 
spirit that lives on others' labor ; the greedy and insatiate 
purpose that determines to govern others without their con- 
sent, and compels all men to bow to them ; the aristocratic 
spirit that can never be satisfied, and cries " Give, give," in- 
cessantly ; the dark and terrible necessity that demands more 
territory for its growing millions, more lands, more States, 
more funds, more power ; that fatal institution that dare not 
trust the spelling-book and Bible, that gags free speech and 
keeps back the light of intelligence from the darkened minds 
of ignorance — must culminate at last in the arm of force 
and murder ; must throw away th^ ballot and take instead 
the bullet, and send its worst fanatics forth to do deeds that 
recoil in nameless horror on itself. And thus believing, I 
do dismiss the hideous contemplation of the deed. And for 
the doer, what is he now but Cain ? — a fugitive and a vaga- 
bond, henceforth he'll live till the earth shall weary of him, 
yet the terrible hereafter refuse to give him shelter. The 
sobs of the widow and the orphan his noble victim cheered, 
the hiss of a loathing world whose every heart is closed 
against him, shall murder his sleep for evermore ; the gates 
of every home on earth all violated by his parricidal act, 
shall close against him ; the curse of every fettered captive 



24 

on the earth, who looked to Abraham Lincoln as their Moses, 
shall bow his head beneath their bitter load ; and the dying 
eyes of the crucified One of old, and the gentle modern 
martyr, shall be the only prayers the human family shall 
dare put up to God for him, who cannot utter with his 
guilty lips one prayer for himself. Our tears fall fast this 
hour in shame for him and his loathed deed ; in pity for 
ourselves, in our heavy loss, and our land's dimmed glory. 
But who weeps for him ? who pities him ? or what hand of 
man can outstretch to save the wretch, who himself knew 
naught of pity ! The hour is even now upon him when he 
must cry, though mortal may never hear him, " My punish- 
ment is heavier than I can bear." Let Him who judges 
heed him. Man answers not, except in the fearful chorus, 
Justice herself must swell, " Death to Lincobi's murderer ! " 
No more of him, but wake from the fearful palsy fallen 
upon you people, and answer to yourselves and to your 
country. What is now your duty ? what the demands of the 
hour, if any, on your individual action ? 

Friends, the hour has come to try men's souls. The coun- 
try waits for you, with arm and heart and head, to rebuild 
its shattered altars, remould its glory, and restore or recon- 
struct, if need be, the charter of its life and all your liber- 
ties — your national Constitution. Permit me, then, to close up 
this address by a brief reference to this absorbing subject of 
your duties. 

The very night before that fatal one that robbed us of our 
nation's strong right arm, the people's voice demanded of me, 
in the city of Philadelphia, suggestive words on the theme of 
reconstruction. 

I then said what I now repeat — that the question of recon- 
struction depends almost solely on the time that is chosen, 
and THE CONDITIONS under which the work commences 



25 

The true time is not yet, or can or will be, until the Govern- 
ment, b)'^ the war power by which it is clothed in the sacred 
Constitution, restores intact, in peace and in full integrity, 
every one of the thirty-six States which constitute the Union, 
to the people, who intrust that Union to the Government* 
The States are the people's, the Government their guard- 
ians, the war power the means by which the government 
restores the States in their full proportion unto the people ; 
and never until such full and entire restoration is fully made 
should the war power cease or the people (the true legis- 
lators of the country) pretend to reconstruct the laws, which 
are made for the union and the people, not the people 
FOR THE UNION AND THE LAWS. It is plain, then, that recon- 
struction signifies, first, the restoration of peace in every 
State of the Union ; the Union then itself is reconstructed. 
The States are one and at their former status, restored there 
by the war, and only need that legislative wisdom shall deal 
with, execute, and annihilate the fatal thing that was the 
cause of icar. And if the legislative wisdom of the people 
cannot in solemn council agree to accuse and condemn the 
monster Slavery as cause enough — if some lingering rem- 
nants of the suicidal folly which cherished the serpent, in 
whose foul embrace the land has well-nigh died, should still, 
in blind infatuation, refuse its sanction to an amended charter, 
killing the nation's cause of death to save its life, what then ? 
Why, reconstruction will come from the same source that 
made construction — the People ! The Constitution was the 
creation of the people ; and shall it destroy its author? Or 
are those who made it, and find it protects the nation's 
death instead of the nation's life, incapable of making 
another and a better one ? Nations grow and parchments 
don't ; and if a nation's growth is to be hindered to suit the 
narrow limits of its laws, let them grow too / or if they can- 



26 

not, KILL THEM, and save the nation's life ! Or if you hesi- 
tate to add to or amend the law which you've outgrown, 
let the heart speak what the timid tongue fears to pronounce, 
and " He, being dead, yet speaketh." Let the glorious voice 
of Freedom, calling in trumpet-tongue from the grave of 
Abraham Lincoln, and ascending, in the immortal procla- 
mation of emancipation, to the very heavens with his march- 
ing soul — let this speak for you, and, in the name of the 
" higher law," God's law, and Abraham Lincoln's own most 
godlike act, decide your problem, and reconstruct your 
laws on the rock which death, nor hell, nor time, nor human 
trespass can evei' touch with fingers of decay — the eternal 
rock of Justice ! You say you love your *' Father Abra- 
ham " — prove it by swearing over his martyr-grave not to 
dishonor the grandest of his deeds by a base repudiation of its 
legality. That charter which will not sanction liberty m 
the land of the Stars and Stripes, and nullifies the brightest 
act of Abraham Lincoln's life, is itself the fittest subject in 
the laud for the scalpel-knife of reconstruction. As for the 
rest, your duty's very simple. The first that presses home on 
every living creature in this land is a firm and devoted heart 
of loyalty tendered to your new President. Did not the enor- 
mous exigencies of his momentous situation appeal to every 
better feeling in man's nature for faithful service ? Andy 
Johnson of Tennessee deserves it of you — another self-made 
man ; another man of the people ; another grand Republican 
ladder, on which the mudsills rise to the highest rounds of 
nature's loyalty ; another living protest against the destroy- 
ing influence of slavery on whites as well as blacks. 

Rally around your President with heart and head and hand, 
and be sure of this, that, if the mantle of the too-merciful 
Lincoln has not fallen upon his shoulders, that of bold 
Andrew Jackson has, and that in these troublous times, 



27 

when mercy is requited with assassination, the spirit of the 
immortal Andrew Jackson and the mortal Andrew Johnson 
can better deal with treason and murder than the saintlike 
form whose arms enfold its destr yer. 

Mourn for Abraham Lhicoln with your hearts, but prove 
your love to him by taking up the burden he's laid down and 
finishing the noble purposes of his great life so untimely 
quenched. For you, his country, and the holy cause of 
patriotism, he perished. He spoke no word, he made no 
sign, nor left a single charge on mortal man ; but, oh, if 
ever silence was most eloquent, if speechless, dying martyr- 
dom pleads now, as in the days of "righteous Stephen," with 
an angel light upon its blood-stained brow, obey that dumb 
behest, and do his work, and break the last blood-crusted 
link of those iron bonds that have well-nigh killed the earth's 
last, best republic. We must have no treasonable words ; no 
more disloyal murmurs ; no more pretense of plain, blunt 
speech to stab the government, ruin the nation, and kill its 
best defenders. Crush out the serpent in the egg, the hen- 
bane in the seed, and we'll have no more such bitter fruit as 
murder and rebellion. 

Trust to the man of the people, raised up, in this hour of 
sudden need and strange calamity, like a God-given answer 
to a prayer our lips have not had time to fashion. Ques- 
tionnot his faults, but regard his sterling qualities. Follow his 
brave, strong footsteps in his great ascent of life ; his noble 
words and pledges of good faith ere the nation's need had 
come, and be sure that God has sent him to our rescue, and 
your part is to give him added strength in a nation's united 
heart and faith. 

What matters it, then, that he we love and so bitterly de- 
plore has gone before us? Sooner or later, for us all, his sum- 
mons will be ours, God only give us grace to follow him to 






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